San Antonio Book Festival offers plenty for book lovers

White Bird Publications author Beth Lauzier leans out to help customers during the 2017 San Antonio Book Festival. This year’s edition, the sixth annual, is scheduled for April 7.

White Bird Publications author Beth Lauzier leans out to help customers during the 2017 San Antonio Book Festival. This year’s edition, the sixth annual, is scheduled for April 7.

Photo: Tom Reel /San Antonio Express-News

Photo: Tom Reel /San Antonio Express-News

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White Bird Publications author Beth Lauzier leans out to help customers during the 2017 San Antonio Book Festival. This year’s edition, the sixth annual, is scheduled for April 7.

White Bird Publications author Beth Lauzier leans out to help customers during the 2017 San Antonio Book Festival. This year’s edition, the sixth annual, is scheduled for April 7.

Photo: Tom Reel /San Antonio Express-News

San Antonio Book Festival offers plenty for book lovers

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As many as 20,000 bibliophiles are expected to descend on the San Antonio Book Festival’s freeevent Saturday at the Central Library and Southwest School of Art downtown.

The sixth annual festival will spotlight more than 90 local and national authors with readings, panel discussions and book sales and signings.

Trinity University professor of creative writing Kelly Grey Carlisle is one of the featured authors. Her memoir, “We Are All Shipwrecks,” about the unsolved murder of her mother and her unusual childhood growing up on a boat in the Los Angeles Harbor, will be the subject of a discussion titled “A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Redemption.”

“My book was published in September, and I’ve done a few book festivals since then,” she said. “But it’ll be nice to be in my new hometown and have a chance to connect with local readers.”

There will be new events and other changes at the festival this year, according to Lilly Gonzalez, deputy executive director.

“We’ve had tremendous growth and are able to attract higher-profile authors than in years past,” she explained. “So we want to keep evolving to accommodate that.”

Higher-profile authors mean bigger crowds, so this year the festival is setting up a large tent in the Central Library plaza to host what are expected to be popular panel discussions. The tent will seat up to 450, compared to the smaller rooms inside the library, the largest of which has a capacity of only 200.

The book sales and signings also have been moved to the second floor inside the library.

Geektown, the area devoted to teens and teens-at-heart, has been expanded out onto Augusta Street (which will be closed for the duration). Activities will include virtual reality systems, Dungeons & Dragons contests, 3-D screenings and a robotics range.

As for the author lineup, festival literary director Clay Smith said organizers worked hard to “meet readers where they are and have authors who write about things they care about.”

And the same time, he continued, “We hope to introduce attendees to author and topics they might not be familiar with as well.”

And Roger D. Hodge (“The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism”) and Bryan Mealer (”Muck City”) will headline one called “Texas Blood: Two Writers Wrestle with Family Legacy.”